The poems of Robert Traill Spence Lowell

I wander here, alone,
To seek if faithful stone
Is set by every grave;
And to call up again
Thoughts, cherished not in vain,
They to my young soul gave.

III.

Yours first I call, dear Hopes,
Seen on the sunny slopes,

Where as a child I lay;
Or that by winding brook,
My loitering steps o'ertook,
In the long summer day.

IV.

There was no sound of man;
My free soul forward ran
Among the coming years.
I felt the breath of fame:
I heard aloud my name:
My eyes were nigh to tears.

V.

Glad Hopes! Ye gave me then
What long, late toil to men
Brings only withering:
I plucked with childish gripe,
The fruit ere it was ripe;
But it was mine in spring.

VI.

Sweet, sweet, sad Hopes! what now
Is left upon the bough,
Of flower, or fruit, or leaf?
And yet, why mourn, if ye

So early gave to me
Thoughts fair and bright, though brief?

VII.

Feelings of childhood's time,
That stretched about to climb
On all that stood around!
Whose twining grasp was laid,
In sunshine and in shade,
Tireless on all it found,—

VIII.

Whose hold was often flung
From that whereon ye clung,
Yet would not long be free;
By your fond instinct taught
I thought (true childhood's thought)
That all were kin to me.

IX.

Amid the boys' loud band
I seem again to stand;
Again quick-voiced and glad;
Feelings more great and strong
Than to child's sports belong
In those young days we had:

X.

The swell, ere storms begin,
When huge waves tumble in
And fill the little bay;
So from life's vexéd sea,
The strong, deep swell knew we,
In childhood's peaceful day.

XI.

That human brotherhood,
Mingling in every mood,
Made this our life so great,
The mystic, awful bond
Still urged me forth beyond
Myself, to feel my fate:

XII.

One of so many more,
Whom life was laid before
Full of mysterious things;
Where every human soul,
To the great common whole,
Its lore and insight brings.

XIII.

I look once more to see,
As at the chestnut tree

Where the far voices died,
The pleasant thoughts that played
Beneath that pleasant shade,
In troops on every side.

XIV.

Then youth came sailing o'er,
Fairer than all before,
Broad-sailed and deeply fraught.
Love! Hope! Ambition! you
Mastered the lithe, strong crew.—
Love?—Hope?—Ambition?—Naught!

XV.

Yet, if they were but vain,
They come no more again
To make me loiter here:
The work that God has set,
It has the long days, yet,
And brightest of the year.

XVI.

Still has my chief work been
Rather to make me clean,
As he must be that will
Go forth 'mid thronging men

And stretch his forward ken
Onward and upward, still.

XVII.

No more, no more I call!
Cool, solemn shadows fall
Down on my open mind!
For this I wandered here—
For this I called you near,
Thoughts of things long resigned;

XVIII.

They will be raised one day,
And throng about the way
Of the old dying man;
Hopes, feelings, joys that smiled
Upon him when a child,
And o'er the bright scenes ran.

XIX.

Children in summer's eve,
Do pluck the old man's sleeve
And clamber up his knee;
Or draw him by the hand
To where their playthings stand,
Or their sweet sports to see.

XX.

Thus will these come, once more,
To lead him gently o'er
The scenes loved long ago;
And in his eldest days,
All childhood's long left ways
Make him again to know.

July, 1846.

[One stanza was put in and the neighboring parts adjusted to it in 1860.]

University of Virginia Library

A WALK AMONG MEMORY'S GRAVES.

I.

II.